Madness til Midnight

"Is this a game of chance?" Kerry asked, knowing no one would finish the quote. "Do I need to calculate armor class hit points?"

He chuckled. "Sure, I'm up if everyone else is. Though I'm not very good at card games."

Annie smiled. I figured she'd bring those tonight. "I'm terrible at card games too, Lina. I never win--though not for lack of trying. What's the game?"

Lina smiled at the thought that everyone was pretty much ok with playing, "Well, I know a lot of different card games: Old Maid, Go Fish, Uno, Dai Hin Min...those are the ones I with my little sisters, but I do know a lot more."

Kerry was lost. Most of the games he'd played with card had been solitaire: being an only child with few friends meant he didn't get a lot of chances to play card games. And besides Fish--which he'd played at pre-school--he didn't recognize a single game Lina mentioned.

Of course, they'd be the same way if I brought up D&D, he thought. They'd have no idea what I was talking about . . . whoa, wait, I wonder if . . . we have dungeons, I could get some rules and we could LARP a game! Or Vampire--no, Mage!!! A smile broke out on Kerry's face. I mean, we could do real magic and LARP it out. That would be so money!

He stared off into space for a few moments, then said, "Yeah, sure. Anything's good. I'm casual."

Annie watched as Kerry's face went from bored to positively euphoric. What in the world is he thinking...

"Are you okay, Kerry," she smiled at him and put a hand to his forehead. "No temperature but you look like you're about to burst from your own skin."

"Oh, I was thinking . . ." Kerry cleared his throat, not realizing that he'd appeared excited. "I was thinking about when I was role playing. I've played a lot of things--if there's one thing Cardiff has, it's gamers--and I thought, 'You know, we have dungeons, we could LARP'--that's Live Action Role Play--"

Okay, this is going to sound real strange to a bunch of witches that you can pretend to be something you aren't! "Pretty much you make up a character that you play in the game world, and the . . . you, um . . ." He shrugged; screw it. "You pretend you're this character playing in that particular world.

"I mean, there's Dungeons and Dragons, which, given what we are doing now isn't all that strange . . . but there are other games you can play where you're like in space or in the future or something like that."

Kerry stopped talking so he could calm down. I didn't realize I was going to get this excited over it. "That's what I was thinking about. It would be cool to have a gaming club here. At the school."

As she watched him, Annie recognized the look on his face. I've seen that look before, she thought as a memory of Kerry sitting across from her on the squashy yellow couch in the Hufflepuff commons bubbled up.

Back then, they were discussing divination, which to many isn't worth the effort, but Kerry seemed excited about the possibilities of merging his world--with hers. And that is why I'm crazy about him...

"I've never heard of anything like that before," Annie said, imagining the type of game he'd just described being playing in the dungeons...maybe even extending out through the tunnels. "If you begin a club like that, I'm sure it will be the first of it's kind."

"That reminds me of cosplaying, but instead of acting out of a scene, you can create your own scene, right?" Lina asked. She knew a little bit about role playing, but she never imagine that people did it in real life.

"Well, if you mean like acting out something from a show, no, it's completely different." Kerry was getting wound up, 'cause this was his world, and he found it just a little surprising that Lina didn't know this because a lot of anime people were into role playing as well.

Or, at least they were where he'd lived.

"You have someone controlling the game--the Gamemaster, Dungeonmast, whatever. They define everything that's happening in game--think of a director of a movie. Then, the players use there character to not only interact with each other, but with the NPCs--Non Playing Characters--the GM creates.

"It's sort of like interactive storytelling, with one guy defining part of the story and the players using their characters to define the other part.

"And in the end, the GM also decides on if people have actually done the things they set out to do by checking skills against target numbers. That way, you know if you hit someone, or jumped over something . . . or got off a spell if it's a magic-based game."

Kerry leaned into the sofa, relaxed, thinking of some of the games he'd done before taking his fantasies to the real world. "That's really making it simple, but some games have hundreds of books you can reference for material." He shrugged. "For a place like this . . . best to keep it simple."

Lina nodded at everything that Kerry was saying. Lina didn't go too deep within certain parts of geek culture, but she thought that this, LARPing and Dungeons and Dragons' thing sounded like a lot of fun. "That sounds like it'll be fun! It'll be great to get out of the norm every once in a while," she admitted.

"It takes time to set up a game," Kerry said. "And all my books on my portable drive back home, so I'd have to find a way to port them over to another drive for my iPad . . . and figure out how to charge my iPad . . .." He smiled at that last one, since if there's one thing the wizarding world was sorely lacking, it was plugs.

"Most of all . . ." Now I'm really going to feel stupid. "One of the games I played a lot was called . . . um, Mage. It was about people who could do . . . magic." Kerry sighed. "Suddenly it doesn't seem like much of a game anymore."

He ordered up another cocoa. "Then again, there's always Serenity."

"Serenity? Are you talking about that show about the anti-hero that steals stuff, fights evil bad guys that are like zombies but not quite, has a ruff and tumble friend that ends up betraying the character and surprises no one by doing so, and whose mentor dies in his arms while telling him to believe?" Lina said in disbelieve, then quickly added in, "or was that Uncharted 2...I can't remember, it's all the same."

Lina noticed how quiet Annie and Emma were being while she and Kerry spoke Geek. She quickly shifted gears before to include them in the conversation, "so, um, Annie, Emma, what are some things you guys like doing as hobbies?"

Annie was enjoying every bit of the exchange between Kerry and Lina, wondering at the new words she was hearing and imagining how to fit a dragon into one of the dungeons without getting caught.

When Lina asked about her hobbies, she was taken aback. "Uhm," she ran her fingers through her hair. The truth was that lately, she'd only had one hobby...and he was sitting right next to her. "I enjoy cooking with my mother. I don't know that you can call it a hobby, though. I like to paint..."

Annie felt her cheeks heat up. "I'm not very good at it and since I've been seven, I've only really painted one thing over and over again."

Looking upon Annie--which he'd been doing most of the night--Kerry said, "I didn't know you painted. I wonder if they have some art classes here, since they have music." While he had no artistic skill at all, he appreciated those who did.

Glancing over to Lina, Kerry felt he needed to address her last question to me. "Yeah, that Serenity. The one that flies The 'Verse run by the Sino-Anglo Alliance that's working hard to keep the workin' people who wanna be free out of the sky, the ones who control everything you know, who made a myth of Earth That Was, who wanna make life perfect and sterile and send their operatives out to hunt down physic girls they turned into living weapons who like nothing better than to dance barefoot and rub soup in their hair." He nodded, then smiled.

"Yeah, my dad watches very few Muggle shows, but for whatever reason, he likes that one. I'm not a big fan of Firefly, or whatever it's called, but my dad and I both like the British version of Being Human and Star Gate SG1." She gave a slight laugh at the memories of she and her father watching their shows when her mother or sisters want to watch something else. "Of course, we don't watch a lot of English speaking shows at home; so it is a rare thing for us to watch them."

Turning her attention back on Annie, Lina smiled in surprise, "Of course cooking with your mom is a hobby; if you enjoy it, it's a hobby. Ooo, I bet painting is fun too!" Her curiosity did get the better of her and she asked, "so, what exactly did you paint over and over for the past several years?"

Annie fought hard to resist the urge to snuggle closer to Kerry and whisper into his ear all the thoughts that were flowing through her mind as he spoke in his strange language with Lina. She found herself once again lost in thought, remembering Hogwarts and their Hufflepuff commons, when Lina asked her about her paintings.

What have I been painting... Her bedroom closet at the lake house held those secrets. "I started having very vivid dreams when I was seven." She adjusted her position on the couch so she could stretch her legs. "The first few dreams I had, I was convinced I was seeing fire...and instead of being afraid--I wanted it. My mother tried everything to calm me, but I cried pitifully for that flame...every night."

Annie glanced at Kerry and, without thinking, reached her hand up--running her fingers through his hair. She gazed into his eyes and continued. "One night, she came to me with a pad of paper and an assortment of things to draw with. She said, 'Annie, drawing is touching at a distance.' and laid out the art supplies on my bed. That night, I drew my first flame."

She looked over at Lina and smiled. "I've painted other things, like certain trees... two trees actually, that almost come together," she moved her fingers, outlining the shape they made in her minds eye, "and a shadow of a boy sitting in the crook, reading."

Just then Annie's questions of Monday night came back to him--those about the trees and him sitting there, hidden . . . it's like she's known about me for so long, he thought. And for all he knew, she had. Kerry flashed on a moment, one that seemed so long ago . . ..

That moment in the bookstore on Diagon Alley, where he first met Annie and she looked at him and asked, "You don't know me?" At that time knew nothing of the Krum Family, of quidditch, of flying or brooms, or even magic. It was all a huge, incredible mystery.

And now, only about 6 weeks later, it's like you were always meant to be here, Kerry thought.

Kerry didn't know what else to do but lean over and kiss Annie on the lips. Because . . . well, why not?

And when he was done he settled back with his arm around her shoulders and gave no explanation for his actions.

But Annie will know why . . ...

Raven and Leigh both walked into the Dining Hall together, both of them dressed in similar sleeping attire. Raven wore, obviously, one of her brother's old, red shirts, seeing how it was way too big for her and faded, and red, flannel pajama bottoms while Leigh also wore a big, black shirt and blue, flannel pajama bottoms.

Raven looked around the room a bit, hoping she'll find someone she knew so she wouldn't be around her brother all night. It wasn't until her eyes landed on a couch before she let out a relief sigh. She turned towards her brother, who was chatting away with his friends, and tugged on his shirt. When he gave her his undivided attention, his sister muttered, "come with me for a second; I want to introduce you to some of my friends." At the word 'friend,' Leigh excused himself from his friends and followed his sister to one of the couches in the area.

Raven noticed that the four, three she knew and one she didn't, were talking among themselves, so she waited for them to become silent before saying, "Hey ya'll. How've ya'll been?"

Kerry looked up and away from Annie upon hearing Raven's voice. Wow, have seen her in a while, he thought, and he realize she'd been pretty quiet during their classes the last three days.

Nodding, he said, "Hey, Raven, how's it going?" There was something familiar about the boy standing with her . . . "Hey, you were in the Bastion Monday handing out brooms," he said. Noticing the resemblance, he addressed Raven, asking, "Are you guys related?"

Annie was surprised to see Raven at the Madness. She's been keeping busy lately, she thought, and wondered if the boy next to her might be the reason. She scooted closer to Kerry, making more room on the couch for Raven and her older friend.

When Kerry mentioned a relation, Annie took a closer look at the boy tagging along with Raven and guessed they were brother and sister. Then why has she been so quiet lately...

Raven beamed with excitement as she sat next to Annie, dragging her brother down as well, causing him to sit on the arm of the couch. "Yep, this here is Leigh, my older brother!" She turned to face Leigh, "so, this is Annie, Kerry, Li-I mean, Evanglina, and-" she paused. Raven went around the seating area putting a name to a face, but when she got to Emma, she drew a blank. It wasn't her fault though, she just didn't know who the girl was.

Amused by how his sister obviously didn't know know who the girl was, he saved her the embarrassment, "You're Selene, right? I've heard about what you've wen't through. I'm really glad that you're alright." He gave Emma a slight smile, and went to face Kerry. "So, your real name is Kerry, hmm?" He smirked at the boy, "I thought Starbuck suited you well." When it appeared that his sister was looking at him weird, he shrugged it off and said, "don't worry bout it."

Kerry felt it was getting late, and with Annie so close--and the locket so nice on her neck--Kerry was seized by the notion that they needed a little privacy . . ..

"If you'll excuse us for a moment," he told everyone, then slid back and down on the pillow, pulling in Annie next to him. "We'll be up for air in a bit. Carry on."

He threw the covers over Annie and him and giggled loudly.

Annie howled with laughter as Kerry pulled her under the blanket with him. The silence around them spoke volumes, but tucked beneath the covers, none of that mattered. She rolled halfway on top of him, their faces within inches, and kissed him.

The room disappeared as the unrelenting desire to explore the taste of him overwhelmed her. The seconds stretched out before her and only when she was satisfied, she pulled back and touched a finger to his bottom lip. “Soul meets soul on lovers' lips,” she whispered.

Smiling, she rolled onto her back and poked her head back out from under their blanket hideaway. The entire escapade had happened between heartbeats, but to Annie it seemed an eternity.

She yawned and curled up on the couch, slipping her head onto Kerry’s lap. “I’d rather not talk about call signs, if you don’t mind,” she said, glancing at Raven and her brother, who was lounging on the arm of the couch.